There are stranger things than the intersection between man and myth. Fiction is one of them. This is a story - short, but not brief - about a lost girl, a homeless trickster God, and the boundary between reality and fantasy.

Kaylee woke up,
finding herself face to face with the glowing eyes of her alarm
clock. 4:36 stared at her in digital. Groaning, she turned away and
buried her face in her pillow. The fabric was warm, like the sheets
and the mattress. It wasn't a sweltering summer night, but it was
warmer than Michigan. She burrowed deeper into the pillow, feeling
for a cold spot. Nothing.

Disentangling
her hands from the covers, she flipped it over. There was a soft
whumph of settling fluff, and then silence. Even the crickets
were still. They had abandoned their pulpit by the window, deciding
to take the gospel of the night to other places. The quiet roared
louder than noise.

Kaylee
laid her cheek against the pillow, checking the temperature. It was
slightly cooler. She sighed and closed her eyes. Calm. Quiet. The
baleful glare of the alarm clock on the back of her neck.

With
a snort of irritation, she sat up and reached across to her bedside
table. The clock watched as her fingers closed over its cord. She
glared back, and tugged the black cable from the wall. The light died
without protest. "I'll reconnect you in the morning, if you
promise to behave," She whispered.

"You're
a little old to be talking to things that can't talk back," A
warm dusty tenor came from the foot of her bed. Kaylee sat bolt
upright, pulling her blankets around her. They hung in sodden folds,
clinging to her arms and sides. Unbidden, one hand shot to the alarm
clock. It was solid and heavy.

"What
are you doing in here?" It came out as a hiss. Her other hand crept
across the covers to the clock, closing on the cord. Maybe she could
swing it like a mace…

"I'm
not in there. I'm out here. You asked me not to disturb your
privacy." The voice sounded reproachful, like the whine of a dog
with an empty bowl.

"I'd
say that this counts as disturbing my privacy." At the foot of her
bed, the plain, white wall broke into a window. The wooden shutters
were closed over it, slanting narrow bars of moonlight onto the
carpeted floor. Behind them, the window was open. That left only a
thin screen between her, the night, and the mosquitoes. And the owner
of the voice.

She
rolled out of bed, feeling the carpet squelch under bare feet.
Keeping the clock clenched in one hand, she managed to wind the sheet
around herself. It hung in a sweat-stained robe as she tip-toed to
the window. With her right hand, she eased the shutters open. Her
left hung by her side, ready to swing.

"Did
you miss me?" The man sat just beyond the screen, his feet perched
on the narrow lip of the sill. He might have been eighteen, or
seventeen, or twenty three. A cowboy hat was perched on his head, the
top of it ringed with beadwork. Men and dogs chased each other in an
infinite circuit around it. There wasn't a trace of stubble on his
chin, but two symmetrical dirty blonde sideburns painted his cheeks.
His eyes were blue, even in the moonlight

"What…what
are you doing here?"

"I've
got nowhere better to be?" It was a statement, but also a question.
He asked it with a half-grin and a slight shrug. The mace hung
forgotten in Kaylee's left hand.

"I
didn't think you'd be here when I came back. I thought I imagined
you." She walked back to the edge of the bed and sat down,
smoothing the sheets with the clock.

"That's
funny. I was beginning to think the same thing." A rare breeze
drifted by, passing the window. The man's hair rustled, flying out
around the cowboy hat. Kaylee was reminded of how narrow the sill
was, and the steep drop onto the white roses below. She got up again,
and started for the screen.

"Hang
on for a second. I'll open the screen." She reached out and the
man held up a hand, forestalling her.

"I'll
be alright out here." To illustrate his point, the man put his back
to the screen and threw his feet over the edge, letting them dangle
above the rose bushes. The window sill was only a few inches wide.
Kaylee started forward, expecting him to go tilting out into the
night. When he glanced back over his shoulder, she was inches from
the screen. "Honestly, I like sitting on the ledge. It's halfway
between the house and the wild. People spend their lives going from
one to the other, and never pause in the places in between." His
eyes smiled. "How much have you forgotten?"

She
stood motionless, aware of the fact that she was right next to the
window and the cowboy who scorned gravity. After a moment, the breath
she'd been holding huffed from her, and she returned to her seat on
the bed. It was slightly cooler, now. "I went away to learn."

"You
told me that. What did you forget for it?" His feet kicked lazily
in the dark air, ten feet above white blooms.

"I
don't know."

"Maybe
that's it, then. You forgot what you forget in order to learn."

"Were
conversations with you always this confusing?"

"Maybe
you forgot a little of that, too."

The
both paused, letting the absence of the crickets slide between them.

"I'm
not back for good, just for the weekend."

The
cowboy hat bobbed a nod.

"I
mean, there are a few things I needed to be back here to sort out."

"If
there's anything a man on the ledge of your window can do, just let
me know."

"Thank
you."

Rolling
onto his side, the man stretched out along the sill. "I can't
promise anything, but I'm sure I could find one to help you out."
He grinned, lips sweeping up off his teeth in a strangely canine way.
Kaylee remembered the clock in her left hand. She got up again and
walked to her bedside table. There, she dumped it in a mess of wire
and plastic.

Hands
free, she sat down on the edge of her bed. "Can you tell me a
story?"

The
man sighed in mock exasperation. "Once upon a time…"

"Not
that kind of story."

"No?
I thought that was the kind you were used to, now."

"That's
the kind I want to write, not the kind I want to hear."

"Alright,
then. Make yourself comfortable."

Kaylee
flopped back onto the bed, dragging the warm pillow under her chin.
She lay facing the window, and the words of the man on the ledge.

I
was going along.

"You
were going along?"

"Yes,
I was going along. Do you always have to interrupt a man when he's
telling stories?"

I
was going along, a long while before 'once upon a time' had been
invented. How can that be true, when I'm so young and handsome and
the story is from so long ago? Well, maybe it was a cousin of mine.
Or maybe it was a different me. Back before there were rules about
who could be what and why, everyone was at least a few people.

Anyways,
I was going along. Everything was dull and empty, because it was
before trees and rocks and streams had been formed from the earth. We
didn't need things like that to keep busy; we all had our multiple
selves. So, when I found a tiny branch sticking out of the ground,
boy, was I surprised.

I
stood there for a long time, just watching it wiggle around. First
the twigs would stretch and waggle, and then the branch itself would
sway. After a while, I decided that it couldn't be a branch. It
must be the paw of some poor creature stuck in the ground. So, I
walked up to the branch and put my mouth right up to the dirt. "Hey,"
I yelled "If you're down there, wiggle your twigs."

The
twigs started wiggling like crazy, so I started digging. The soil was
dull and plain and heavy, and I wasn't making much progress. I
called out to my two other selves, and asked them if they could help.
One of them asked why he should have spend his time digging through
the boring ground. I told him that there was a treasure buried there,
and he could keep some of it if he helped unearth it.

All
of my selves liked this idea, so we started digging. This time, it
went twice as fast as before. Within moments, we uncovered the poor
animal and pulled him up onto the earth. He lay there gasping, and I
looked back into the hole.

The
earth was only a few feet deep back then. No one had any reason to
dig through it, so there never had to be much of it. When I looked
through the hole, all I could see was an empty whiteness below me. An
empty whiteness, and a huge tower of animals rising up from the
nothing. Most of them looked like the animal we had unearthed, but
some of them were shaped differently, or had different markings. They
were all standing on each other's shoulders, straining up towards
the hole in the earth. The top one was holding up its hands towards
me.

"Let's
help them," I said. My other selves looked at me incredulously.

"Help
them? You promised us treasure. I'm going to have to take this one
instead. Maybe he can serve me."

"Help
them? They want me to do even more work for nothing? If they ever see
me again, they'd better run."

I
sighed, and looked at my two selves as they walked away. One was
leading the creature. They were too wrapped up in their own concerns
to even hear me.

Looking back into
the hole, I called down "My other selves have abandoned me. I don't
think I can help all of you up, but if the one on the top stands on
its tip-toes, I think I can drag it up here. Some day, we'll come
back for you."

The other creatures
didn't seem to like this, but they straightened out, standing as
tall as they could. The held up the one on top so that I could lean
over the rim and grab its paws. I had to scrabble with my feet to
keep from being dragged over the edge, but I was finally able to haul
that animal up. It lay there on the boring ground for a moment,
panting. Then it looked up at me and said something. Even though
everyone could understand each other back in those days, I couldn't
understand it. I couldn't understand her. She was the mate
for the other creature I had dragged up, she told me without
speaking, with only the light flashing in her eyes.

"Go to him," I
said "The other me, the one whom I promised treasure has him, but I
don't think he'd mind owning another." She looked at me as if
she understood, and then she left. I looked down into the hole, at
the tower of creatures. "I'm sorry. I can't help you yet. Be
patient, and one day I'll come back for you."

They said nothing,
so I tried again. This time I sang it to them, and this time they
understood. When I left the hole in search of my other selves, they
were still standing and swaying in the nothingness.

That's
how they are today, and I'm still going along.

The
man in the window closed his story with a smile. Kaylee was asleep,
her arms wrapped under the pillow and a similar smile painted on her
face. "Just like old times," The man whispered, setting his back
to the screen and facing out into the night.

The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.